THE MAN WHO BROKE THE SILENCE
1893 Words
The city storm had teeth.
Thunder cracked so violently that Emberly felt it in her ribs as she and Elias ran down the slick sidewalk. Their soaked shoes slapped the pavement, rain exploding around them. Neon lights blurred in streaks of red and blue and sickly yellow.
Elias kept her hand wrapped tightly in his.
He was guiding her, but Emberly was moving on her own now — running not just from someone but toward something.
Toward the truth.
They ducked into an alley just as a police cruiser roared by. Elias held Emberly flat against the brick wall, his arm across her protectively. The cruiser lights swept by, red-blue-red-blue, painting the alley in pulses of warning.
Emberly felt her pulse in her throat.
"They’re looking for us," she whispered.
"Correction," Elias murmured. "They’re looking for you."
The implication made her stomach twist.
“You think he reported me?” she whispered.
Elias shook his head slowly. “No. Someone in the program did. To bring you in alive.”
Alive.
The word should have been comforting.
It wasn’t.
The cruiser kept going. Elias let go of her slowly.
“We need to go underground,” he said quietly. “Off-grid. My contact won’t talk unless he senses real danger.”
Emberly looked up at him. “How far away is he?”
“Not far,” Elias answered. “But getting there without being tracked is the problem.”
She swallowed. Rain ran down her face, her cheeks, her chin.
“Then let’s start walking.”
They moved, pressing deeper into the alleyways until the city swallowed them again.
---
For nearly an hour, they slipped through backstreets and abandoned lots. Emberly’s nerves vibrated with every passing car, every distant siren, every flickering streetlight.
Every shadow felt inhabited.
Especially the tall ones.
They reached an old industrial district where rain drummed on rusted metal roofs and the air smelled of iron and oil. Elias stopped beside a warehouse with shattered windows.
“This place looks abandoned,” she murmured.
“It is,” Elias said. “But the tunnels below aren’t.”
Tunnels.
Her heart jumped. “Elias—”
“It’s the only way to get to him without being followed. Trust me.”
He pried open a bent metal door and led her into darkness.
Emberly felt the temperature drop instantly.
Inside, the smell of damp concrete and dust choked the air. Elias pulled out a small flashlight and swept its beam over the interior — cracked floor, old machinery, cobwebs thick as curtains.
He pointed toward a metal grate in the floor.
“That’s our entrance.”
Emberly stared. “This looks like somewhere people go to die.”
“Only if they go alone,” Elias said.
He kneeled and lifted the grate. A long, narrow staircase led downward into total darkness.
Emberly’s skin prickled.
“This doesn’t show on city records,” he murmured. “Which means they can’t track us down there. That’s why we use it.”
“We?” Emberly asked. “You’ve used it before?”
Elias hesitated.
That hesitation told her everything.
“Not alone,” he said.
“Never alone.”
She swallowed.
“What happened to the people you were with?”
His jaw tightened.
“They didn’t make it out.”
Her throat dried instantly.
“Elias—”
“Emberly,” he said softly. “I’m not letting that happen to you.”
He started down the stairs.
She followed.
---
The descent felt endless.
Concrete walls.
Dripping pipes.
Darkness so thick the flashlight barely cut through it.
Her footsteps echoed strangely — like the darkness swallowed part of the sound and returned it slightly wrong.
They reached the bottom at last.
Elias guided her into the main tunnel — wide enough for two people, lined with old utility wires and rusted metal beams.
“Stay close,” he murmured.
She did.
Everything felt wrong down there.
Too quiet.
Too still.
Too cold.
Like the air had been left untouched for years.
Emberly shivered. “What exactly is this place?”
“Not officially anything,” Elias said.
“Unofficially? One of the city’s old passage routes for transferring… people.”
“People?” Emberly echoed, voice thin.
“Patients. Test subjects. Runaways. Anyone the program wanted hidden.”
Her skin crawled.
“You knew about this long before I came along,” she whispered.
His silence confirmed it.
And confirmed something else — he had been involved with the program longer than he had told her.
But before she could question him further—
A sound echoed down the tunnel.
A soft metal clang.
Emberly froze.
Elias’s arm snapped in front of her.
Another sound.
A scrape.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Footsteps.
No.
Not footsteps.
Dragging.
Like someone pulling a heavy metal object across the floor.
The sound grew louder.
Elias pulled Emberly behind an old support beam, positioning himself between her and the noise.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
The scraping grew closer.
Then stopped.
Something breathed in the darkness.
A low, hollow inhale.
Emberly’s lungs constricted.
A flicker of movement brushed past the edge of the flashlight beam.
Elias leaned forward slowly, silently, and shifted the light—
Revealing an old metal gurney.
Empty.
The legs of it scraped the ground.
Emberly’s stomach lifted into her throat.
“It moved on its own,” she whispered.
“No,” Elias murmured tightly.
“Someone pushed it.”
He rotated the flashlight.
And the beam landed on a figure.
Standing behind the gurney.
Emberly’s blood turned into shards of ice.
The man was tall.
So tall his head almost touched the low ceiling.
Dressed in a dark coat.
Face obscured by the brim of a hat.
Not moving.
Not breathing.
Just standing.
Watching them.
Emberly’s breath left her in a single silent gasp.
Elias’s grip on her wrist tightened painfully.
The flashlight flickered.
The man’s head slowly tilted.
Directly toward Emberly.
Her heart stopped.
“Latham,” she mouthed.
The man lifted his hand.
And Emberly saw the silver ring gleam in the beam.
Her chest seized.
That was him.
Elias reacted instantly.
“Run,” he snapped.
“Now!”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the darkness.
Behind them—
The gurney screeched violently against the ground.
The tall figure moved.
Fast.
Too fast for the size of him.
Emberly ran harder than she ever had in her life.
The tunnel blurred around her.
Her breath tore from her chest.
Elias shouted, “Left!”
They veered sharply.
Another tunnel.
Left again.
Right.
Emberly didn’t know how Elias knew the way — didn’t care — she just ran.
Behind them, the scraping became footsteps.
Heavy.
Measured.
Inhumanly steady.
Getting closer.
Elias grabbed Emberly’s waist and yanked her through an opening barely big enough for their bodies.
They tumbled into a narrow crawlspace.
Emberly gasped. “Where does this lead—?”
“No talking,” Elias hissed.
He reached back and pulled a metal grate over the entrance just as enormous fingers appeared on the other side of the bars.
Emberly’s heart ruptured in fear.
Latham crouched, his pale eyes glowing faintly in the darkness.
The brim of his hat dipped low.
Rainwater dripped off the edge.
He leaned close to the grate.
Close enough that Emberly saw the faint scar that traced across his jaw.
Slowly—
Too slowly—
He whispered her name.
“…Emberly.”
She slapped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
Elias held her against him so tightly she could barely breathe.
Latham’s fingers slipped between the bars—
Long.
Almost bonelike.
Searching.
Emberly recoiled.
Elias whispered in her ear, “He can’t fit through. He won’t reach you.”
But the tremor in his voice betrayed him.
After a long moment, Latham slowly withdrew his hand.
He stared at them.
Then—
He smiled.
A small, horrific, knowing smile.
Like he had planned every step that led them here.
He whispered one more sentence.
One that turned Emberly’s blood to ice.
“You’re coming home soon.”
Then he stood.
He walked away.
Not rushed.
Not angry.
Just… calm.
Certain.
Confident she would follow when the time came.
The scraping of the gurney resumed as he pushed it back down the tunnel.
The sound echoed for a long, terrible minute before fading into silence.
Emberly collapsed into Elias’s arms.
Her body shook uncontrollably.
“That was him,” she choked. “That was him. The man from the basement. The handler. The one who—”
“I know,” Elias whispered, pulling her close. “I know.”
“Elias, he found us. He followed us. He knew where we’d be—”
“He always knows,” Elias murmured. “He’s been doing this his entire life.”
Emberly grabbed his jacket.
Her voice cracked.
“Why does he want me? He has other girls. He has that program. Why me?”
Elias hesitated.
And when he answered…
His voice wasn’t calm.
It wasn’t reassuring.
It was scared.
“Because you were the only one who escaped.”
Emberly’s breath left her.
Elias continued.
“And the only subject in the program’s history whose conditioning didn’t take.”
Emberly stared at him.
“What do you mean—?”
“Emberly,” he whispered.
“You weren’t just a victim.”
His eyes locked on hers.
“You were their masterpiece.”
Her world shattered.
She felt the walls closing in, felt air rushing out of her lungs.
“No,” she whispered. “No—”
Elias cupped her face.
“You survived him," he said. "You resisted what the program spent years trying to turn you into. That makes you the most valuable asset they’ve ever lost.”
Her jaw trembled.
“And now,” Elias said, his voice nearly breaking,
“They want their creation back.”
Thunder cracked somewhere far above the tunnels.
Emberly clamped her shaking hands over her ears.
Elias pulled her against him.
“We have to reach my contact,” he whispered.
“He’s the only one who can tell us how to stop them.”
“How far?” Emberly croaked.
“Not far,” Elias replied. “Down this crawlspace. Through another tunnel. Then…”
He took a shuddering breath.
“Elion Street.”
Emberly froze.
“Elion Street?” she whispered. “The street where my mother died?”
Elias nodded grimly.
“It’s no coincidence,” he said.
“That’s where the program started.”
Her heart pounded painfully.
“And that’s where the last person alive who knows its secrets is hiding.”
---
They crawled deeper into the darkness.
Latham’s footsteps gone.
But his voice still echoing in Emberly’s mind.
His smile burned behind her eyes.
His ring flashing like a command.
You’re coming home soon.
Her tears mixed with dirt on her cheeks.
Elias squeezed her hand once.
Hard.
“We’re going to end this,” he whispered.
“Before he ends you.”
But even Elias’s voice couldn’t drown out the truth Emberly now knew:
Latham wasn’t chasing her out of revenge.
Or unfinished business.
He was chasing her because she was the program's greatest creation.
And he intended to finish what he started.
- Writer
